From the Edison factory's humble kinetoscope,
the amoeba of the classic movies industry film, grew the
international market for film industries development we know today.
It was just a simple machine comprising a
cabinet and a length of film on a spool.
The customers inserted a coin, the light shone
and the film was projected onto the back of the cabinet.
Old classic movies like classic western movies have always
been perceived as an American product, but, in fact,
European inventors
played crucial roles in the development of the cinematic apparatus for example, William
Friese Green in England,
Georges Demeny of France, and Anschutz and Skladanowski in Germany.
In the 1890s the pioneers were French the Lumiere brothers, Gaumont and Pathe in
film industries development.
Kinetoscope Parlors were opened in 1894 in the principal cities of America.
Perhaps it is not absolutely
accurate to say that cinema began with the kinetoscope, because the essence
of the cinematic experience is its communal nature (whilst retaining privacy
for the individual sitting in the darkness of the cinema
as he or she sees their dreams appear before them). Thus, the cinema was
really born with the invention
of a projector that could throw a series of moving images onto a screen.
The Latham brothers and W.K.L.
Dickson invented the Panoptikon projector which took movies out of the kinetoscope cabinet and in
September 1895, in Paris, the Lumiere brothers showed a paying audience films that they themselves had
produced in their Lyons factory.
In the States, musical theatres began to present movies classic as part of their variety bills.
American film market and film companies
were formed the Biograph and Vita graph companies, for example. In 1902 the first motion picture theatre,
the Electric, was opened in Los Angeles that start the california film industry history.
Early cinemas were called nickelodeons because you paid a
nickel (five cents) to see the show. By 1907 there were approximately 3000 such nickelodeons across
America in industries film development. The cinema was on its way to becoming big business.
American Domination Of The World Market
By the end of the First World War the film industry American history
had effectively established itself as the
dominant cinema, although the development in film industries of the Soviet Union, Germany,
France and Scandinavia
would challenge classic Hollywood movies in the 1920s in terms of
the artistic use of the medium. Directors such
as Eritz Lang, Sergei Eisenstein, Friedrich Murnau, Abel Gance, Jean Renoir, Mauritz Stiller and
Carl Dreyer made films that very few American film makers could match
like old classic western movies. However, to ruthless movie
executives films are pure business in American film development industries.
California Studios Hollywood had the power to impose
Hollywood classic movies products wherever films were shown commercially.
Their own huge domestic market gave American film industry and
American film makers an enormous advantage over other countries.
Studios could make film after film in the sure knowledge that American box office revenues alone would
produce substantial profits. Foreign revenues were the icing on the cake. Exhibitors all around the world
were clamouring for products to show and the film american market
produced far more films than anywhere else.
The businessmen who owned the studios realised that there were three crucial areas of the film business
they had to control if they were to establish a virtual monopoly in the marketplace production,
distribution and exhibition.
Of these the real money was to be made in distribution and exhibition,
so all the major California Hollywood studios were
intent on setting up their distribution arms and buying as
many cinemas in prime locations as they could.
As the distributors of their own films, they could
charge a substantial rental (usually between 30 and
40 per cent of box office receipts) to cinemas not
owned by themselves. As the owners of their own cinemas,
they were showing their own products and all
revenues came back to the parent company.
Most of the early movie moguls came into film production via
other business activities as diverse as theatre
ownership and scrap dealing, and they brought a
hard nosed, ruthless,
market orientated approach to the enterprise of making american classic movies for a mass audience like
popular American western classic movies.
The film American industry history was also very efficient at publicising its wares.
The studios were adept at
creating an aura of glamour and excitement round classic american movies,
and stars were the main carriers of this 'aura' like in classic movies western American.
The production of glamour was aided and abetted by newspapers and magazines in all the developed
countries of the world. Thus, when Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford came to Europe after the end
of the First World War, they were greeted by enormous numbers of people wherever they went. Movie stars
were the new royalty, and a huge publicity machine, partly wielded by the film industry American
Hollywood studios California and partly
by other media with vested interests in aiding this publicity, made sure they would retain that aura for
years to come.
Extract from “The Movies An illustrated history of the silver screen”,
publisher Joanna Lorenz London: Anness Publishing Limited. 2001.
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